Assorted Links: September 11, 2005

Up From Socialism

Even Booker T. Washington might have lost heart faced with the greatest enemy of American Blacks, the welfare state.  John McWhorter, an "Uncle Tom" to the modern Black Establishment, examines the role of "big hearted" whites, usually statists, in destroying the tremendous resilience of traditional black families and black culture.  HT PT.

In fact, white America does remain morally culpable — but because white leftists in the late 1960s, in the name of enlightenment and benevolence, encouraged the worst in human nature among blacks and even fostered it in legislation. The hordes of poor blacks stuck in the Superdome last week wound up there not because the White Man barred them from doing better, but because certain tragically influential White Men destroyed the fragile but lasting survival skills poor black communities had maintained since the end of slavery.

Few thinking people regret the flower children’s opposition to the Vietnam war, sexism and racial discrimination. But these advances also spelt the demise of old standards of responsibility. Taught that criminality and violence must be judged in proportion to the extent to which poverty and discrimination have coloured one’s existence, the enlightened white person saw black violence as “understandable”.

This meant a largely theatrical black separatist ideology, drastically short on constructive aims, had a public sanction that it had never had before. Hating whitey for its own sake now had an ear among the influential and quickly became the word on the street.

My favourite intellectual exercise of late is to read reports coming out of New Orleans and replace the word black with the word aboriginal.  We've made many of the same mistakes the Americans have.  We were just a whole lot luckier they panned out differently.

Strangest Question of the Week

In a time a crisis I most definitely don't ask myself, "Would Would Lester B. Pearson Do?"  But then again, I'm not Burkean Canuck.

Is there a third course? Between a toothless United Nations multilateralism, and a limited, American-led multilateralism? Consider...

ITEM: The Prime Minister refuses military cooperation with the U.S. supported by a majority of Canadian public opinion. If not public opinion, the Prime Minister's rationale is his desire to preserve the world's historically pre-eminent international organization. In doing so, the Prime Minister seems relatively unconcerned with the impact on Canada's major diplomatic and trading relationship. The Leader of the Opposition calls on the Prime Minister to uphold Canada's commitments, first, to democracy and freedom, and to nurture the relationship with our major trading partner.

The year? 1961. The Prime Minister? John George Diefenbaker, who tried to revive the British Empire in its dying gasps. And the Leader of the Opposition who called for holding fast to the principles of freedom and democracy, and nurturing trade with the U.S. was Lester Bowles Pearson, son and grandson of Methodist ministers.

But Lester Pearson was no peacenik. During the Cuban missile crisis that deeply divided the Diefenbaker cabinet and threatened to bring down his government, Pearson supported the U.S. blockade. While Diefenbaker balked at stationing nuclear-capable missiles in Canada from the U.S., Pearson expanded the Distant Early Warning system or "DEW line" upon taking office in 1963. While he promoted the United Nations and Canada's role as a peacekeeper under UN auspices, Pearson carried on a clear-eyed foreign policy strengthening Canada's bilateral relationship with the U.S. militarily in NORAD and on trade in the 1965 Auto Pact. And although he refused to support the U.S. in Vietnam, it wasn't until Mr. Pearson left office that the dismantling of the Canadian Armed Forces began in earnest.

Absence Doesn't Always Make the Heart Grow Fonder

So believes Marjorie LeBreton, one of the Brian's chief flacks back in the day and now a Senator.  It seems Ms. LeBreton is glad that the CBC is off the air.  One wonders why.

Marjory LeBreton — a former top aide to Brian Mulroney who still occasionally acts as a spokeswoman for the ex-prime minister — said the CBC is biased in favour of the Liberals and New Democrats.

In a letter to an Ottawa newspaper, she cited poll numbers that suggested NDP and Liberal supporters missed regular CBC coverage the most.

“The lockout has deprived them of their biggest cheerleaders on the national scene,” Ms. LeBreton wrote in a letter published in the Sept. 12 edition of the Hill Times newspaper.

She cited a recent Decima survey as proof the CBC was biased. In the August poll of 1,000 Canadians, 10 per cent of respondents called the labour dispute “a major inconvenience” while 27 per cent called it “a minor inconvenience.”

Sixty-one per cent reported no impact at all.

The poll also indicated that older people, and NDP and Liberal supporters missed the public broadcaster the most.

Ms. LeBreton said Canadians can get their news elsewhere in the CBC's absence.

May I take this moment and point out that the CBC was founded on the initiative of Richard Bedford Bennett, a Conservative Prime Minister back in the days when the adjective progressive had yet to be applied.  The layered ironies of Canadian history.

How Many Died, How Many Walked Away

The hundreds of New Orleans police officers who failed to report for duty after Katrina may not have been A.W.O.L. 

HUNDREDS of missing cops were feared dead in New Orleans last night.

Some 700 officers had been told to stay home as Hurricane Katrina hit — and between 400 and 500 have still not reported for duty.

Chiefs said it was “inconceivable” so many dedicated and experienced members of the city’s 1,600-strong force had not managed to establish contact after so long.

Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley said some may have remained there to look after their own families — but concern was growing about the sheer number who had not come back to work.

Asked to estimate the possible death toll he said: “We don’t know how many. One is too many.”

A large number of cops lived in middle-class areas close to the levee barriers which broke, unleashing a killer torrent from Lake Pontchartrain.

A police source: “These guys were the sort who would stand up and be counted but they have just vanished.”

At least two cops have committed suicide after enduring days of horror and danger.

The EUrocracy and The Future of Education

It isn't just the European economy that has been crippled by the commanding heights approach to public policy, the European educational system has also suffered.  Of the top twenty universities in the world, according to the survey cited by this Economist article, seventeen are American.  Why?  Less statism, more freedom.

But, as our survey of higher education explains, since the second world war Europe has progressively surrendered its lead in higher education to the United States. America boasts 17 of the world's top 20 universities, according to a widely used global ranking by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. American universities currently employ 70% of the world's Nobel prize-winners, 30% of the world's output of articles on science and engineering, and 44% of the most frequently cited articles. No wonder developing countries now look to America rather than Europe for a model for higher education.

Why have European universities declined so precipitously in recent decades? And what can be done to restore them to their former glory? The answer to the first question lies in the role of the state. American universities get their funding from a variety of different sources, not just government but also philanthropists, businesses and, of course, the students themselves. European ones are largely state-funded. The constraints on state funding mean that European governments force universities to “process” more and more students without giving them the necessary cash—and respond to the universities' complaints by trying to micromanage them. Inevitably, quality has eroded. Yet, as the American model shows, people are prepared to pay for good higher education, because they know they will benefit from it: that's why America spends twice as much of its GDP on higher education as Europe does.

Plus Ca Change, Plus Ca Mem Chose

France looks for a new leader.  New boss, probably the same as the old boss.

In political style, the two men could scarcely differ more. Mr de Villepin is aristocratic, polished, a diplomat. Mr Sarkozy is pugnacious, plain-talking, a lawyer. Conventional wisdom has it that their politics are wide apart too. Loyal to the president whom he served for seven years as chief-of-staff, Mr de Villepin is his political heir. But Mr Sarkozy, who backed a rival candidate against Mr Chirac in 1995, has always marked his political distance from the veteran Gaullist. Yet a close look at the two politicians' speeches this week hints at something new: Mr de Villepin has begun to steal some of Mr Sarkozy's clothes.

Breaking taboos in a welfare-cushioned society, the prime minister declared that he wanted to “restore the value of work” and “make work pay”; Mr Sarkozy talked of the need to “make work central” and to reward “the France that gets up early in the morning”. Mr de Villepin vowed to crack down on welfare fraud and to balance welfare “rights and obligations”; Mr Sarkozy insisted that there would be “no rights without equivalent obligations”. Mr de Villepin said he would end heavy taxes that “discourage work and damage the attractiveness of our country”; Mr Sarkozy called for a limit of 50% on combined personal taxes and insurance contributions. Both promised help for the middle class.

A limit of 50%!  This lot makes Jack! and the Dippers look good.

Donald Sutherland:  Canada's Home Grown Moonbat

The question remains, did marrying Shirley Douglas push him over the edge, or was he always this nuts?

But is preening in a petticoat at all relevant today? “My God, it is,” he booms. “Particularly in the United States where they talk about family values but leave people to drown.” Sutherland enjoys rhetorical flourishes, and soon he is off: “In France they might not earn as much (as in America) but they work a 35-hour week and they spend time with their families; isn’t that real family values?” Soon we have covered 9/11, touched on the “evil” that is Tony Blair and been through a rant about the war in Iraq and why it is a bigger crime than Vietnam.

Sutherland has a conversational trick of trumping whatever has just been said. Like when I ask if he thinks Iraq can be compared to Vietnam. “Oh no, it is way worse,” he says. “Vietnam was a lie but at least there was a political agenda. It was the domino theory. Iraq is about nothing but George Bush’s ego laced with imperialist ambitions. And it was helped by your government.”

His thunder is so theatrical I find myself doing something curious: defending Tony Blair. He warms to his theme of the unholy alliance: “Let’s go and sign a deal with Hitler, like Chamberlain. That was the pride of England.” Then Sutherland is off again, this time on the media.

Before you start thinking this is just another actor / moonbat story, there's a twist.  A wonderfully ironic twist for a man who's father-in-law led the first socialist government in North America.

Including, presumably, that he is happy to be coining it on the back of his Hollywood success? “No, I’m not rich. I had a tax problem in this country, curiously enough, and my accountant said the British government was patently wrong in taxing me, and they were, but we couldn’t persuade them and it cost me everything I had.” By that he means profits from all his blockbusters of the 1970s and 1980s.